Stress-induced Hyperglycemia Ratio as an Independent Risk Factor of In-hospital Mortality in Nonresuscitation Intensive Care Units: A Retrospective Study

Purpose: To determine whether the stress-induced hyperglycemia ratio (SHR) is independently associated with in-hospital mortality in critically ill patients in nonresuscitation ICUs.

Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, clinical- and laboratory-related data from patients first admitted to nonresuscitation ICUs were extracted from an open-access database of >50,000 ICU admissions. Patients were assigned to one of two groups according to an SHR threshold of 1.1. The primary end point of this study was the in-hospital mortality rate. The associations between SHR and length of stay in the ICU and hospital, duration of mechanical ventilation use, and vasopressor use were secondary end points. Logistic regression models were established in the analysis of in-hospital mortality risk, and areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) were analyzed to investigate the association between the primary end point and SHR used alone or together with the Simplified Acute Physiology Scale (SAPS) II score. The Youden index, specificity, and sensitivity of SHR and SAPS-II were also assessed.

Findings: In this study, 1859 patients were included, 187 of whom (10.06%) died during hospitalization. The group with an SHR of ≥1.1 had a greater in-hospital mortality rate (13.7% vs 7.4%; P < 0.001), longer length of stay both in the ICU and in the hospital, a longer duration of mechanical ventilation use, and a greater rate of vasopressor use. On adjustment for multivariate risk, a 0.1-point increment in SHR was significantly associated with in-hospital mortality (OR = 1.08; 95% CI, 1.00-1.16; P = 0.036). The AUC of the association between risk and the SAPS-II score was significantly greater than that with SHR (0.797 [95% CI, 0.576-0.664] vs 0.620 [95% CI, 0.764-0.830]; P < 0.001). The AUC with SAPS-II + SHR was significantly greater than that with SAPS-II used alone (0.802 [95% CI, 0.770-0.835] vs 0.797 [95% CI, 0.764-0.830]; P = 0.023). The Youden index, specificity, and sensitivity of SAPS-II + SHR were 0.473, 0.703, and 0.770, respectively.

Implications: Stress-induced hyperglycemia, as evaluated using the SHR, was associated with increased in-hospital mortality and worse clinical outcomes in these critically ill patients in nonresuscitation ICUs. SHR was an independent risk factor for in-hospital mortality, and when used together with the SAPS-II, added to the capacity to predict mortality in these patients in nonresuscitation ICUs. Prospective data are needed to validate the capacity of SHR in predicting in-hospital mortality in patients in the nonresuscitation ICU.